From the ever-impending doom and stress of an enemy that’s always watching or the Slender: The Eight Pages-esque remnant collection mechanic, Daylight’s gameplay is lacking in originality. However, it’s all tried and true, and is pulled off well enough that I feel it isn’t a total downside. The procedural generation of each enemy appearance and level layout also adds just enough difference to the semi-monotonous gameplay routine to keep it fresh and fun as long as it’s experienced in small play sessions. If played for too long, the routine, for me, at least, started to get old pretty fast. Because of this, I tended to only experience Daylight bit by bit in about 45-minute portions so it wouldn’t affect my overall experience. Ironically, on my second playthrough, I found it rather fun running back through each level in speed run fashion. The scares may not be as dramatic that way, but the act of speed running the game also provided a fun experience.
Ambiance is an important feature in horror games, and Daylight has it down, for the most part. Faint whispers, footsteps, ghoulish howls, creaky doors; all of the usual horror tropes can be found within. When the ghost is close by, one of the most unique and oddly creepy sound effects will emit around you. Imagine electronic distortion mixed with a sprinkle of scratching; that’s about as close as I can get to describing the noise. What makes this so effective is that it almost always seems to come up from behind you when walking down the slim corridors of the facility, making it extremely effective. Besides pure ambiance, music will sometimes take its place and get the job done for the most part. To further talk about the sound design, the voice acting is a mixed bag. The ominous voice sounds believable and well-played, but Sarah’s voice broke the immersion to me. It’s as if the voice actor wasn’t comfortable in her lines, because each one comes out sounding awkward. Sometimes, her voice queues come at random times that isn’t even appropriate. For instance, I was searching a pretty well-lit area with a glow stick out to further light my path, and Sarah started yapping about not being able to see anything. Instances like this had me cackling, but this is coming from game whose sole purpose is to frighten players, it can really break the overall experience.
Daylight, being one of the first PlayStation 4 horror titles (other than the port of Outlast which used Unreal Engine 3), sports the shiny new Unreal Engine 4. Sadly, the new tech of the engine isn’t really pushed. All of the environments look like last gen efforts. That being said, the levels all definitely portray the spooky atmosphere well and blend nicely as your progress. It’s just a bit disappointing that the tech couldn’t have been pushed to its limit. One thing that had me confused, however, was how jumpy and inconsistent the frame rate was. Some moments, it’ll be around a solid 30-40 frames per second, but some points, especially the forest, run at around 20 fps. Considering the game is on next gen tech, the sporadic frame rate is just inexcusable. It could just be me, but it proved to be bothersome at times.
Speaking of bothersome, I ran into two glitches that hindered my progress in Daylight. The first glitch I encountered was by walking into a wall in the end portion of the prison by a steam valve. When walking towards this portion of wall I was able to go right through it into a dark box that I practically couldn’t get out of. The second glitch can be found in the forest. It, once again, was stumbled upon when I walked into a certain spot of the wall. However, this time I was dropped down below the map then shot out of the top of the wall which was extremely nerve wracking since the ghoul was right behind me, and death was the last thing I was wanting. When I landed, I was able to walk it off like no big deal, so, at least in this instance, I wasn’t forced to restart my current checkpoint. From then on, I learned to steer clear of the walls in fear of encountering other glitches.
When it’s all said and done, my time with Daylight was enjoyable. It offered multiple scares and chill-inducing moments, as well as being an abundance of fun to play with a group of friends. Its simple nature and short, procedurally-generated playthroughs offer varied scares that make it easy to come back to and enjoyable to view if you’re part of the audience. However, Daylight is marred by unoriginality, some rather subpar graphics for the tech that runs the game, progress-ceasing glitches and some voice acting that will really take you out of the moment. It’s nothing life changing or dynamic, but it offers good scares and enough replayability that I feel justifies the $15 price tag on the PlayStation Network (or Steam). Sure, there’s better out there (I’m looking at you, Outlast), but the PlayStation 4, still being in the adolescent stages of its life, you take what you can get. Stay scared, my friends!
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Review copy supplied by Publisher.
